Simulation of land use spatial pattern of towns and villages based on CA-Markov model

Firstly, this paper analyzes the basic principles and processes of the spatial pattern changes of land use in towns and villages, and the result shows that the land resource demands of urban development and population growth lead to the spatial pattern changes. Secondly, in order to grip land use changes better, the paper proposes a method for the simulation of spatial patterns. The simulatingmethod can be divided into two parts: one is a quantitative forecast by using theMarkovmodel, and the other is simulating the spatial pattern changes by using the CA model. The above two models construct the simulative model of the spatial pattern of land use in towns and villages. Finally, selecting Fangshan which is a district of Beijing as the experimental area, both the quantity and spatial pattern changing characteristics are investigated through building a changing dataset of land use by using spatial analysis methods based on the land use data in 2001, 2006 and 2008; CA–Markov is used to simulate the spatial pattern of land use in Fangshan for 2015. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.